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Steve Diamond looks out at the vista from the 10th floor of his offices at Yonge St. and St. Clair Ave. E.

“You see the highrises along Yonge St. and then the single family homes in the neighbourhood pockets?” he says. “That’s so Toronto. No other major city in the world has this kind of mix.”

Diamond, CEO of development firm Diamond Corp. (diamondcorp.ca) has an eye for urban design and its progress. It’s largely why he’s been tapped to sit on the board of Waterfront Toronto, the trilateral agency guiding development along the lakefront. He joins Susie Henderson, director of Collins Barrow Toronto Infrastructure Advisory, and Mohamed Dhanani, executive officer at the Aga Khan Council for Canada.

The appointment, Diamond says, is an “opportunity to give back” — mindful, maybe, of his father’s legacy along Toronto’s skyline.

Ephraim Diamond (1921-1987) co-founded Cadillac Development Corp., the forerunner of real-estate giant Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd., which built and operated some 11,000 apartments across Toronto up to 1982 and became an iconic commercial developer.

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Today, Steve Diamond and his brother Carey, who runs Whitecastle Investments, are carving out their own trail and legacy, with 11 major projects completed. Their most recent acquisitions are the former Humber River Hospital lands on Keele St., and the Celestica site at Don Mills Rd. and Eglinton Ave. E.

Steve Diamond began his career practising municipal law at McCarthy Tétrault, where he became a senior partner and head of its municipal law and planning group. Nine years ago, he moved on.

“I enjoyed it but felt I’d done all I could as a lawyer,” he says. “As a lawyer you take instruction. I wanted to follow my own instructions.”

Today, Diamond takes his father’s words to heart: “He’d say, ‘The developer represents those who don’t have a home but want one. We’re their voice. We’re not creating the demand for housing, we’re accommodating it.’” He also stresses responsible building is by collaboration and consensus.

It’s a trait Ward 19 City Councillor Mike Layton appreciates. He worked with Diamond and Bob Blazevski on the Ordnance Triangle and Garrison Point project in the Fort York neighbourhood.

“We didn’t agree on everything but he became a champion for some really important aspects, such as the connections involving the King St. pedestrian bridge there which council had put on hold, finding a place for Eva’s Phoenix youth shelter and public art,” Layton says.

“Did he tell you he even drove Councillor Doug Ford down to the site to explain to him what we were trying to do to get his support?”

Moving past the stereotypes of glass-and-steel towers and ahead with new concepts can be a path filled with roadblocks, Diamond notes.

“They (the City) ask for outside the box and when they get it sometimes say it’s too outside the box.”

He cites the 28-storey Blue Diamond condo project at Deer Park United Church on St. Clair Ave. W. that proposed removing the church’s roof to create an open-air public courtyard. The city initially objected. “The heritage people had concerns over how the building was being treated,” he says.

Diamond went back to them with an expert who explained the preservation must persuade people to use the building. The project is in sale mode now and construction starts in the fall.

Diamond Corp.’s mixed-use project The Well, at Front St. W. and Spadina Ave., took cues from old European neighbourhoods. The project preserves the area’s industrial heritage sensibility and provides open-air mews, a textured terrazzo streetscape surrounded by brick buildings, and an office tower with 2 million sq. ft. of mixed office, retail and residential space.

“Urban Design called it ‘enlightened urbanism’ and very unique,” he says of the city planning department’s endorsement. “We’re quite proud of that.”

Lee Jacobson, treasurer of Wellington Place Neighbourhood Association, said working with Diamond and his company “was collaborative and we really felt part of the process. You got the impression they were concerned with leaving a legacy in the city.”

Picking the next project is as much an art as it is a financial science, Diamond says of the 100 or so projects a year his company considers before signing on for just one or two that meets its criteria.

“We want to ensure we’re making a contribution to the public realm,” he says. “We also look for sites where we can bring our creativity and imagination. That’s Job 1.”

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